We're drawing near to Apple's next product event, which means that leaks are starting to show up. Today, 9to5Mac posted screenshots from a Chinese forum that appear to confirm refreshed 2015 MacBook Airs. According to these screenshots, the "MacBook Air 7,2" is a 13.3-inch laptop that adds an Intel Broadwell processor and a slightly larger 7422 mAh battery, but it's otherwise mostly identical to the current 13.3-inch model. It's a fair bet that there's an 11-inch MacBook Air 7,1 that has been upgraded in similar ways.

Let's run down the evidence in favor of them being real: first, the specs. This Mac is using a 15W Core i5-5250U processor with the HD Graphics 6000 GPU, which occupies the same space in Intel's lineup as the outgoing i5-4250U/4260U and their HD Graphics 5000 GPU. The Boot ROM version and SMC version values increase just a little from the 2013 model's, which is normal (the 2013 MacBook Air's are MBA61.0099.B18 and 2.13f15, respectively). Most convincingly, the build number of OS X 10.10.2 that the laptop is running is 14C2043. The standard build number on current Macs is 14C109. Because new Macs require new drivers and other tweaks, they usually come with specialized builds of whatever the current OS X version is when they're first released. Those drivers are then rolled into the standard OS X releases in a future update.

The rest of the information in these screenshots implies that Apple will be retaining specs and price points similar to the existing models. An inventory sheet shows a base model with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD; a step-up model with a 256GB SSD; and a top-tier model with a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. The 13.3-inch display of this particular model retains a non-Retina resolution of 1440×900.

The rumor mill has been predicting a new kind of MacBook Air, one with a redesigned 12-inch body and most of its ports stripped out. It's said to be a fanless laptop with an Intel Core M processor and a single USB Type-C port rather than the array of ports the current MacBook Air uses. The existence of these refreshed 11- and 13-inch models doesn't preclude a more radical new product, though. The Retina MacBook Pro and Retina iMac both debuted without immediately displacing the non-Retina versions. If the new Air exists, it may exist alongside the 11- and 13-inch models, at least at first.